SEO has different subcategories such as Keyword SEO, content SEO, technical SEO, and others. When talking about the technical category of SEO, one of the important functions includes JavaScript SEO. The optimization of JavaScript focuses on the rendering, indexing, and ranking of the content available on a web page. This content is technically executed by JavaScript, which makes it JavaScript SEO.

In the rendering methods, there are two major options-

• SSR or Server Side Rendering
• CSR or Client Side Rendering

While CSR relies on the browser on the client-side for JS execution, SSR houses all the page resources on the provider’s server-side. Both methods have unique advantages.

Let’s find out about SSR in detail!

What is SSR?

In Server Side Rendering, the server accumulates all the page resources. After that, when a client requests that page, the browser of the client receives the HTML first and renders it. Then, JS, as well as CSS, get downloaded. Finally, the user sees the ultimate page content.

What is the impact of SSR on SEO?

The SSR approach allows the source code to contain the whole HTML content. This allows a search engine to immediately request and crawl the content. It improves the pace of indexing a web page for Google bots. So, the appearance and rank of a web page take a minimal time period. So, if you care about the SEO of your web pages, it is necessary to consider the SSR approach of rendering.

SSR, aligned with client proximity and availability of critical CSS, provides guaranteed results in terms of the first meaningful paint of a page. It also supports other important bots such as Facebook and Twitter. If the service is effective even without JS, the SSR approach provides graceful degradation as well.

Can SSR improve the SEO performance of a website?

Server-Side Rendering improves benefits for customers when using a website. Plus, it allows search engines to render web pages way faster than a CSR approach. This ensures consistent performance in terms of SEO for a website. 

The biggest advantage of SSR is the availability of full HTML content available for rendering at once. This way, search engine bots can immediately obtain the content, render and crawl to index. These simplified events impress Google bots as well as the visitors of a web page. Hence, the SSR approach promotes a better web page experience and higher ranking on SERPs.

However, there are some challenges you need to tackle when using SSR:

• It surely allows a faster way of rendering a web page. So, the customers get to see the content faster. However, the interaction phase starts only after the complete execution of page rendering. So, if a customer chooses to click a button immediately, it might not work during the execution of the page load. To resolve this, SSR is replaced with pre-rendering approach.
• If the CSS is not in good quality, it will interrupt with the TTFB of server side rendering. TTFB means the Time To First Byte of a web page when requested.

Consult a technical SEO professional to understand and utilize SSR effectively.